JUST ONE of the four victims of a Kerry farmer and former county council employee found guilty by a jury in March of 29 counts of sexual assault felt able to read out a victim impact statement at yesterday’s sentence hearing at the Circuit Criminal Court in Tralee.
All were severely traumatised by the abuse and they were traumatised and embarrassed by the trial and the court experience, the court was told. Three of the young women were in court yesterday.
Now in their late teens and early 20s, they were in tears during yesterday’s proceedings.
John O’Connell (59), Killaly, Castleisland, Co Kerry, who had worked in the water services department of Kerry County Council, had denied all 29 charges relating to sexual assaults of the four girls between 2003 and 2008. He was found guilty on all counts by a majority verdict on March 23rd.
He was aged 50 when the assaults began, and his victims were aged between of 10 and 14. Seventeen charges related to one victim, eight to a second, three to the third and there was one charge involving a fourth girl.
One of the assaults took place in the county council van he used to read water meters. Other assaults were in the home of some of the victims and in his own home, the trial heard.
Responding to Tom Rice, prosecuting, at yesterday’s sentence hearing, Garda Emma Mullane of Tralee told how the victim of 17 of the assaults was unable to bring herself to come to court or to write a victim impact statement.
The abuse began late in primary school and continued to secondary school. “Matters came to a head after she became disruptive at home,” the garda said.
A high-achiever all through national school in sport as well as academic subjects, her grades plummeted and she became extremely disruptive as a teenager. She was still “totally traumatised” and could not cope.
“In her own words she feels her childhood has been robbed and she doesn’t know what it was like to be a child,” Garda Mullane said.
She was focusing on her college course and this was her mainstay. She rarely went out socialising and she buried herself in work.
“I feel I have jumped from the age of 13 years to being an adult,” the young woman said in a statement read by Garda Mullane.
The young woman who read her own statement, now aged 18, said she had found the court experience difficult, embarrassing and traumatic.
“I feel ashamed and have only ever told a close friend,” she said. However she was determined to have a good life.
Denis Vaughan Buckley SC, defending, said he accepted the verdict of the jury but said that while all sexual assaults were serious, these were not at the most serious end of the scale.
His client had no previous convictions “good, bad or indifferent”, and he still maintained his innocence.
Judge Carroll Moran adjourned passing sentence to May 4th, and O’Connell was remanded in continuing custody.